


Shiv

by moth2fic



Series: The Train [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Loosely based on various fandoms dealing with addiction and homelessness.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 16:13:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10597587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moth2fic/pseuds/moth2fic
Summary: The narrator knows he must catch the train





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on LJ for a collection of stories about a mysterious train

He kicked moodily at the long boarded-up door of the waiting-room. Why _this_ place? Why couldn't they pick him up at the still open station down the line, with the coffee bar and the free Metros to read? (Not that he wanted the coffee but there was at least some warmth.)

Yes, it was nearer Father Patrick's Home but he'd found that position after he'd been boarding here for months. 

"Shiv," they'd said, "go and make yourself useful for a change." So he'd tried. Difficult, when you had no address or national insurance number, to get anyone, even the Job Centre, to take you on. Difficult to get an address when you had no money and no job. But he had nothing else to do so he persevered. Maybe he was repaying them for his nights on the train, his hours of comfort. He wasn't altogether sure why the train carried him at all; he remembered weeks and months dossing with mates, getting high, getting low, occasionally getting laid. And all the time with a knife in his boot, just in case. That's how, he thought, he became known as Shiv, and now nobody, from the train conductor to himself, could recall his real name. 

Had he ever used the shiv? He didn't think so, except, of course, when he'd carved S H I V on his arm (and needed antibiotics and been temporarily detoxed).

He didn't really need the money, of course, and it made it even harder to try, to compete with anyone in _real_ need of a job. Then Father Patrick had noticed him and persuaded him to help run the shelter. It filled the time between trains. At first the good Father had tried it on with him. He couldn't imagine why since he knew he was pale and thin and bony with dark blank eyes. Still, it irked him and he gave the man a look that held just a hint of the possibility of a shiv in his boot. They'd gone back to peeling potatoes and there'd been no trouble since. 

He'd been offered a cubby hole and a bunk at the shelter but he told the Father he was in a long-term squat with some mates and didn't want to let them down. And in a way, it was true. But not as true as his desire to avoid closer contact with a man who looked like an ancient oiled tortoise and, despite his 'good works' gave Shiv the creeps. 

He'd tried waiting at the light, warm, open station and that night the train had gone hurtling past. He'd had to sleep behind the bins and could only be glad it was March and not January. 

So here he was in this place again. Had it maybe something to do with his rather hazy past? It didn't look familiar, or at least, not beyond the more recent familiarity of boarding from the same platform every night. Had he brought someone (gender unspecified) here to make out or to shoot up? Had he maybe fallen on the line, drunk or lain on it listening to the thrum of the rails, too spaced out to care? His memories were old sponge, and he was gradually, somewhere in what remained of his mind, using the shiv to carve the soft tattered remains out of his brain. 

Now he could hear the train approaching. He kicked himself away from the wall, using a backwards thrust with the boot with the knife to propel him forward. 

It stopped and he heard himself breathe. Since March he was always a tad nervous, even though nowadays he made sure he was in the right place.

"Shiv, lad," said the conductor. "Get in. Get in. They're all waiting for you." 

So he did, and they were.


End file.
